


Routine Checks

by frangipani



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Missing Scenes, boring married feelings, luke skywalker is about as subtle as a bantha in a speeder, post-Vision of the Future, sex without smut (sorry?), very loose five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 02:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10912623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: Scenes from a marriage in spaaaaace.





	Routine Checks

**Author's Note:**

> Crawling up from the angst bucket to write up this flimsy missing scene collection about my favorite married Jedi.
> 
> Last scene is a rewrite of one of my fave shippy scenes in _Joiner King_ with some add ons. The rest clip more or less as missing scenes from VotF, _Survivor's Quest_ , and _Balance Point_ , kinda sorta maybe.

\-----------  
19 ABY  
\-----------

 

No matter what may be said, stowaway sweeps were not a common occurrence for the spacefaring, so when Luke suggested they do one, Mara looked at him oddly from where she sat on the pilot’s couch. The transport she'd borrowed from Karrde’s organization that morning to take them back to Coruscant was exceedingly safe, Karrde's bay had been secure, his people trustworthy without a doubt.

“You think someone got onboard without us noticing?” Reaching out with the Force, Luke didn’t _seem_ worried.

“No,” he replied from the co-pilot’s seat. “Just as a check.”

She snorted. “You do this with your X-wing?”

“Not that much space to hide in an X-wing.” Luke's eyes roved over the unfamiliar sensor board, hair falling over his face. She had the impulse to brush it away, but it was a stupid impulse, and she was too far anyway. “Han would have us do it every so often on the _Falcon_.”

“Solo never struck me as paranoid.”

He made a soft noise of objection. “Not paranoid. Careful.”

“Solo never struck me as all that careful either. I’ve seen the _Falcon_ , Luke -- inside and outside.”

He chuckled and lifted his head to look over to her. “He’s actually really protective.”

The comment inevitably made her think of the _Fire_ , an ensuing stab at its loss, which she pushed aside because Luke was getting that concerned expression on his face again. She felt Luke reach out tentatively with a tendril of reassurance she accepted. It'd get better.

Mara turned her thoughts again to the sweep. It still sounded like a waste of time to her -- they’d just gone into hyperspace, after all. But none of her reports were that pressing and mostly done. They wouldn’t drop out of hyperspace for hours, so she had enough time to go over them later. If Luke wanted to do things by his bizarre Solo-influenced way, she could humor him.

Mara stood up and stretched, watching him turn his head in her direction, eye wandering down her flightsuit with far more interest than he'd had looking at the sensor board. Luke turned back quickly and she could almost see the moment when it settled that they were _engaged_ which certainly meant he could look, and he awkwardly turned back to stare at her yet again, a blush still creeping up on his face.

This hadn’t been the first time he’d had this reaction, and she’d subjected him to enough grief for it last time that she didn’t mention it now, only smiled to his deepening blush. She wondered when it would go away, wondered if having her in his bed last night at the depot helped or made things worse in that department. He'd done more than just look, in any case. 

“All right, no time like the present,” Mara said, wrenching her thoughts back to the matter at hand as Luke got to his feet. 

The transport wasn’t that big, they covered the ground in less than an hour. It went as uneventfully as anything. Mara was about to walk back to the cockpit when Luke turned to her. “We’re missing the cabin.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You can’t seriously think anyone could have gotten into the cabin. That doesn’t make any sense," she kept on grumbling as she walked over. “I'm all for following procedures and precautions, but there is absolutely no reason to believe that we would need to do a sweep--” 

Mara stopped when Luke's arm curled around her waist. She turned her head to stare at him.

Another bit of a blush was rising up his cheeks, but less than before.

Mara bit off a “Really?” that she directed half to herself with exasperated incredulity.

Luke wasn’t even _good_ at devious, she just hadn't been thinking quite in that direction. Not while she was on a ship, she reasoned before his palm slid over the side of her face, his lips covering hers, and she stopped thinking.

Luke broke the kiss. 

“We could have been doing this an hour ago,” Mara growled half a second later. She grabbed a fistful of his flightsuit and yanked him to the bunk.

They didn’t come out until the proximity alarm rang.

 

\-----------  
20 ABY  
\------------

 

Mara disposed of her plate. There was no notice from Luke via the _Sabre's_ intercom, so she supposed spaceport control hadn’t cleared them yet. She finished her report and sent it to Karrde. That was it, the last of the enormous stack of documents she’d had to file remotely for leaving her last commitments early. Shada was doing a good job with the in-person obligations, but she still needed someone to look over the paperwork. 

Mara left the galley and wandered back into the cockpit.

“Still nothing?”

“Still nothing,” Luke echoed, looking up from his datapad. 

“You want to switch?” 

“If you want.” He shrugged. “Probably will be a while. Some summit or other -- I think Han warned me, but I didn’t think we’d catch it. I guess since you got in ahead of schedule...”

Mara groaned. “And here I was thinking of fresh air after being up to my neck in reports for a week.”

Luke flashed her a lopsided smile. “Not for maybe five more hours. I don’t know if you’ll want fresh air past midnight.” He winced slightly. “Which is about when we’re going to end up getting in.”

She cursed.

From somewhere in the hold there was a loud clank. Luke’s head snapped toward the back and she felt him reach out with the Force.

“Nothing,” he confirmed what she herself knew, but stood up. “I’ll go check.”

“Maybe something got loose.” She sighed, following him out.

“How long since you took her to Karrde’s people?”

She made a face, she’d been trying to make good time to Yavin so she’d skipped the last check. Everything appeared to be running smoothly though and the _Sabre_ hadn’t been in any scuffles recently. She’d been planning to have the techs at their docking bay at Coruscant take a look.

Luke stared in her direction, a faint smile playing on his lips.

“Out of my head,” she snapped.

He only grinned at her. Obnoxiously.

About fifteen minutes later nothing seemed amiss. 

“Could just have been debris.” Luke crouched by a panel with sensor readings on the aft stabilizers. “Given the amount of traffic in this area that seems the more likely cause. But the light here seems a little off -- probably some wiring issue behind the panel.” He looked up. “I guess I can just fix it now. We’re not going anywhere any time soon. First though--”

Luke stood up before she could object and went out the hatch with her behind him. 

“I have some tools by the locker,” she said as the door to their cabin slid open. “Wait, why are we--”

Her next words came out muffled against his lips.

She pulled away to give him a reproving look which made absolutely no dent in how pleased with himself he looked.

“This is ridiculous,” she summed up, placing her palm flat at the center of his chest, soaking up the solidity of him. “ _You_ are ridiculous.”

She meant: _I’m_ ridiculous for having fallen for it. Again.

To his credit, Luke didn't say anything. His hands were by her hips and slid to her lower back, pulling her close. His breath was warm and slightly ticklish at her ear when he said, “You’re done with work, right?”

She made a show of turning her head to the side opposite where he was, as if in thought, but raised her other hand to his jaw, fingers playing along the careless stubble there. Between that and his worn flightsuit no one would take him for the vaunted Jedi Master.

One of Luke's hands slid back to her hip and traced up the zipper of her flightsuit, stopping at the slider.

“If you aren’t,” he continued, thumb idly fiddling with the slider. “I guess I _could_ go back to the wiring.”

Mara narrowed her eyes at him.

He didn’t. The spaceport techs fixed it a day later.

 

\------------  
22 ABY  
\------------

 

“Never thought some low end smuggler could get his hands on a droideka,” Luke commented from beside her as they went into hyperspace. 

“Yeah, that’s a new one.” She understood why Karrde went straight, she really did, but some of his former associates didn’t and had to be persuaded that parting ways was mutually beneficial. Their benefit often being escaping with their limbs remaining attached. Thus far, it had only been aggravating to her. She enjoyed deal brokering much more than crude intimidation; any grunt could do the latter.

Mara turned in Luke’s direction as the systems recalibrated. “Why are you still thinking about it?”

He shrugged. “Kind of wished we had taken it with us. I’d only read about them before.”

She flashed him an edged smile. “You mean _stolen_ it from them, oh Omniscient Jedi Master?”

Luke raised his eyebrows at her. “Confiscated it.”

She chuckled and turned back to the controls. “I should take a look at the transceiver antenna and make sure it’s ready for whatever we’re going to get from Karrde. You'll need the exact range for when you take her out of hyperspace.”

Luke stood up. “I’ll check it out.”

Mara couldn’t wipe off the smile that came over her face so she looked down at the sensor panels as she heard his footsteps depart. She leaned back on the pilot’s couch, closed her eyes and sank into the bond, feeling Luke’s sense go from focused to curious. He’d probably seen the box. She couldn’t help grinning as the curiosity gave into a spark of pleased surprise that made her smile wider, a tight squeeze coming over her ribcage.

“So that’s why you insisted on having lunch there,” came his voice on the ship’s intercom, warmth flooding the bond. “Bet the Huxlings didn’t appreciate having to haul it here.”

Mara shifted forward, toggling the comm to reply. “The phrase 'insult to injury' may have been uttered, but I couldn't just miss out on providing entertainment for you when the opportunity was right there -- we’re only a bit less than a week off from Booster and them.”

Feigned shock dripped from his voice. “But _stealing_ from low end smugglers, Jedi Jade?”

“Confiscating. What use does Huxley have for a droideka anyway?”

He chuckled. “Did I leave my datapad there? I want to look at some of the documents -- see how they match up.”

Mara shook her head at him. He wasn’t wasting any time. She gave a quick once over to the cockpit. 

“It’s not here -- wait, I think you left it in the cabin.” She was thinking of going there anyway to do some reading. “I’ll go get it.”

Mara still wore the smile when she walked into their quarters, finding the datapad on top of the shelving unit beside the door. As her hand closed on it, she caught sight of Luke casually leaning against the bulkhead, his arms folded in front of him. Her smile changed to a look of outrage. 

His smirk didn’t change at all.

“You.” She jabbed a finger in his direction. “Are a liar.”

The smirk vanished, replaced by innocence, even as he stalked the two steps towards her, the tip of his boot tapping hers. 

“What? No, I _am_ going to look over the files.” His hand slid over hers as his other arm curled around her waist. Slight pressure from his fingers and he was whisking the datapad from her hand. He let it go, sending it floating back to where it’d been and folded his hand over hers. “Just not right now.”

Mara tried to make her expression chiding as his thumb brushed across her palm. “Did you really need the Force for that?”

The smirk was back. “My hands are busy.”

Mara rolled her eyes at him, but the arm around her waist tightened, and she let herself be drawn against him, her hand falling to his arm.

Luke released her hand and drifted his hand up her arm to her shoulder. He cocked his head, eyes full of humor. “What was that about entertainment?”

“You know I’m never bored, Skywalker," she chided, but raised her head, daring a kiss.

“Good,” he replied. “Let’s keep it that way,” and took her up on her dare.

 

\-----------  
26 ABY  
\------------

 

"Well, I’ll comm again once we’re at Duro,” Anakin’s voice came through the _Shadow’s_ comm.

“Copy that,” Mara said, looking at his X-wing flying escort beside them. She felt Luke send off his own approval through the Force. 

She kept herself from telling Anakin to get himself into a trance. He knew. Right on cue, Mara felt the shift in the teenager’s Force presence as he went under. 

It still surprised her how much he had grown in the past year.

Would it be different...Mara looked down to her belly, no sign of the knowledge she’d gained just a day ago. She didn’t even have to probe that deeply to feel it now that she knew it was there. To feel him or her.

“Part of me envies him the trance,” Luke spoke up after a moment, drawing her back.

She knew he meant being worry-free for the duration of the jump -- they were headed to look for a missing Jedi, after all -- but Mara said, “You can go do a solidarity trance if you want. Use up less of my resources. Leave me more ration bars.”

The exasperated look that came over his face before he schooled it back made her smile. How long had it been since she’d seen it? Before her illness, probably.

“I saw more mealpacks than ration bars,” Luke noted casually. "For once." 

He had her there. Mara glared at him reflexively. He was staring out at Anakin’s X-wing, but she saw the corners of his lips tilt up.

“Besides..." Luke straightened up and scooted closer to her from the copilot’s seat. He reached for her hand, breaking into a grin, “How could I deny my glowing wife the pleasure of my company for near a week?”

“We’ll see how glowing I get once the morning sickness starts,” she muttered, but interlaced their fingers, squeezing his between hers, echoing that with a wave of affection through the bond.

“You want to go rest?" he murmured, eyes down on the nav screen. "I can do the final checks.”

“Already nagging me, Skywalker?” Mara flashed a warning look in his direction. “We talked about this overprotective streak of yours. How about _you_ go and I’ll finish up here.”

He sighed loudly and popped his head up from the screen. “I’m going to meditate in the exercise room then.”

She grunted out an acknowledgement as he unstrapped himself and left the cockpit. She'd almost finished the check when the intercom sounded.

“Is it weirdly cold there?”

"No," she commed back. "Why?”

“I think something’s broken.”

“Broken?”

“Yeah, maybe there's a thermal system problem. It’s freezing here.”

She narrowed her eyes. Maybe it hadn’t been overprotectiveness at all. If so, he should have said so. This absurd habit of his...

“If this is a ploy to get me into our cabin again, I’m not falling for it. You wait until I’m finished here -- I’m almost done.”

Luke’s indignance poured through the Force as he spoke through the intercom again. “Something’s broken. Check the room readings.”

Grumbling, she pulled them up. Blast it, something was blinking, but it was already well into the night cycle. It’d have to be tomorrow.

She sensed the turn in Luke’s thoughts. “Could be one of the radiators," he commed. "Maybe. Let me see--”

“Not tonight,” she interrupted. “It’s going to take hours just to run diagnostics.”

Luke didn’t reply and she sensed his concentration elsewhere. He was probably heading to the control room on the utility deck.

She shook her head. Now he’d be preoccupied with that stupid temp problem all night and throw his sleep cycle out of whack for the next couple of days. There’d be no dragging him from the issue without a crisis. She could talk herself blue and it’d just go in one ear out the other. Unless...

“Can you go up and make sure it’s not affecting the cabins on the main deck?” she commed.

Reluctance filtered in through the bond. “I’m already looking through the system at the utility deck. I don’t want to go up right now. You don’t have readings?”

“I don’t trust the readings,” she clarified. “I didn’t see the exercise room blink red until now and if it’s that cold it must have fizzed out an hour or more ago.”

“Let me -- “

“Go up and check the cabins while I finish here, Luke. I don’t want to wake up freezing in the middle of the night because you decided the exercise room was a priority.”

Mara felt him grudgingly agree.

She moved out from the pilot’s chair and into the access corridor towards their cabin. He’d have to extract himself out of the system and then climb up a deck, so she reached with enough time to get rid of her clothing. 

This kind of thing still felt a little ridiculous even after so many years of marriage, she thought, going to lie on the bed. Mara couldn’t help reaching for the datapad, but she’d only managed to thumb it on as the door hissed open.

“I think it's one of the pumps on the utility deck,” Luke was saying without pause, clearly having sensed her before he saw her. “So there’s no reason to think that the upper decks, especially the cabins would be affected considering that they are..." Mara looked up from the datapad in time to see him piece together she had not one stitch of clothing on...and the accompanying blossom of interest through the bond.

He slowed down, “outside...that...loop.”

“Temp seems fine here.” Mara put the datapad back down on the storage unit beside the bed and arched an eyebrow.

He smiled, a tinge of jarring disbelief in it. A bit of a pang spread within her; the illness had taken more from them than she’d thought.

Mara felt his touch through the bond like a warm, steadying hand, and extended her own touch back, a clasp. 

The concerned expression that had come over his face melted away. Just as hers had, she assumed.

“Well, we know what we’ll be doing,” Mara paused for emphasis, “ _tomorrow_.”

“Right.” He automatically went into getting rid of his boots, his smile inching into an enticing self deprecating curve she was very much looking forward to kissing. 

Some time several hours later, the temp controls did fizz out. Tired and ensconced in Luke's warmth, Mara didn’t notice until early in the day cycle when her cold feet woke him up.

 

\------------  
35 ABY  
\------------

 

Luke wandered over from where he was fixing Artoo, following her over to the engineering station, leaving Ben playing with his droid parts a few paces away. 

Concern rippled through the bond and Mara bit her lip. She probably shouldn’t have scolded Ben so harshly. She just didn’t want him getting sick. Especially not so far from Ossus. 

“Okay, this wasn’t just about gelmeat,” Luke said softly. 

She frowned more deeply. He was right. Worried as she was for Ben and his new and excessive appetite for gelmeat, it was something else.

“What’s wrong? Tired of hearing about how much Tahiri and the others miss Jwlio?” 

She shook her head. “It’s not that.”

“Tired of growling Ewoks?”

“It’s not Tarfang, either.” She drew a breath. “I’m not sure yet whether the Killiks are enemies or just dangerous friends, but I _am_ certain we need to learn everything we can about them.”

Luke stayed silent, but she felt his pull of encouragement through the bond.

“It’s just this uneasiness I have,” she parsed. “I keep...feeling like we’re about to be attacked again.”

Luke paused and she sensed him reaching out through Force. “I can sense it, too, but not as strong as you.” She blinked in surprise. “We could do another stowaway sweep.” He reached for her hand, pad of his thumb running over the underside of her wrist.

She tilted her head at him, staring at him skeptically. “And find something we missed the last six times?”

He’d been on her like glaze on a ribene after feeling back up to speed after the attack, which was normal enough. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, even with a ship full of their misbehaving Jedi, but that persistent tingling from her Force sense had yet to die down. It'd started to really perturb her. No matter how many times Luke had cornered her in the _Shadow’s_ access corridors for stolen kisses or furtive caresses, she hadn't been able to shake it.

Mara shook her head and smiled, gently pulling her hand away. “Go back to your droid, Skywalker. You’re just trying to get me into our cabin again.”

He grinned rogueishly at her. “I’m predictable that way.” The smile faded into a pensive expression as he felt the depth of her unease. “But pay attention to this feeling. Whatever’s causing it, you seem to have a special connection to it. Or maybe your abilities are deepening.”

Mara clicked her tongue, annoyed at feeling like a faulty sensor, and even more annoyed at the possibility that this might not go away. _Luke_ was the one who lived with large scale amorphous warnings of doom and gloom. Not her. She’d never wanted that either, worrying about Ben was bad enough.

“Lucky me,” she groused.

Mara opened the hatch, then looked over her shoulder before stepping through. If this meant her Force abilities were changing again, she’d have to figure out how to deal with it. She couldn’t put everything on hold because she felt an impending crisis coming on. Luke’s own response to that was largely that there was _always_ a coming crisis -- by this point feelings of distantly looming danger barely made a dent in his patterns.

“And about that cabin.”

Luke’s head snapped towards her. “Yeah?”

She glanced at him with a tilt of her head and gave him a smile. 

“Maybe later -- after you’re done with the droid.” She looked over his shoulder to her lubricant-covered son still fiddling with servomotors. “And we make sure Ben gets all that grime off.”

Artoo warbled something that managed to sound both rude _and_ worried as she went out to the access corridor.

Luke’s reply was muffled through the hatchway, but still audible in its indignance. “ _Of course_ I can concentrate -- ”

Mara chuckled all the way back to the galley. Some laughably outlandish excuse hours later she let herself be cornered in their cabin. It wasn't exactly that she didn't feel the Force warning then so much as Luke making her feel other things _more_.

She did manage to think groggily sometime after, as Luke slept the sleep of the dead beside her, that while not optimal, she could adjust to this new state of things. She was nothing if not flexible. Also, blast it, her arm was half caught under him and had fallen asleep.

Days later at their home in Ossus, she neutralized the Killik assassin that had stowed away on the _Shadow_.


End file.
